![]() Such wisdom will be reflected in our self-portraits. As members of Homo sapiens and to live up to our sapient quality, we should strive to become a truly wise species. “Eco” comes from the Greek oikos, house or household, and phrónēsis is the virtue of practical wisdom (Austin 2018). 55), to use that information and knowledge to shape communities that are safer, healthier, more productive, and beautiful. What we lack is the wisdom, the ecological practical wisdom or ecophronesis as Wei-Ning Xiang calls it ( 2016, p. Utilities and roadways connect places and create their divisions.įor most places on our planet, a bounty of information and knowledge exists about human and natural phenomena and process. We can learn much from boundaries: property lines and jurisdictions. Geographers and historians, soil scientists and botanists, and artists and engineers have complied different readings of the same place. And us: How do we organize our communities, cities, and regions? What are our histories, our laws, our institutions? What do we believe in?īeyond asking questions, we should explore what others have observed and document our landscape readings through maps, diagrams, photographs, drawings, and prose. What plants grow in our neighborhood? Are they native or imported? The birds: do they migrate by seasons or stay put? Where do these flying creatures eat and mate? What other animals live around us? How about honey bees? Bees seem to like urban living. We need to look around and see what else is alive. How does the weather change through the day through the year? How might climate change affect water flows and volume? Where does our water come from? Is the source dependable? What is the annual rainfall? Look at the clouds feel the wind. Rocks and soils and river basins have histories. We need to take walks and to ask what is under our feet. ![]() This era adds another layer of responsibility regarding our actions and our inactions. We humans exert such a dominant influence on those processes globally that we have entered a new geologic era of our making-The Anthropocene. That context is grounded in the fundamental climatic–geologic–hydrologic processes that shape territories. Anne Whiston Spirn noted that this requires a knowledge of the “language of landscape” that enables us to understand the “deep context” of our surroundings (Spirn 1998). To produce places that connect with people and nature, we must learn how to read landscapes. There is no other foundation upon which esthetic theory and criticism can build” ( 1934, p. Dewey grounded his ideas in the biological sensory exchange between people and their environments: “…An experience is a product, one might almost say bi-product, of continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world. As Dewey ( 1934) noted, aesthetics enhance and intensify everyday experiences (see, for instance, Bourassa 1991). Such connections elevate our awareness of the socio-ecological interrelationships in our surroundings and enable us to adapt to change based on that knowledge. This demands an ecological aesthetic.Įcological aesthetics involve sensual connections to natural and cultural processes. 165), healing those scars, and creating new lives and new landscapes. At its heart, such practice requires a new way of understanding Leopold’s “wounds” of the world ( 1966, p. This would be an outcome of socio-ecological practice. Such a culture would move from disorder to order, that is, reducing entropic tendencies. One can imagine an alternative: a culture assembled through ecological knowledge and wisdom. Large swaths of the planet display similar tendencies. What we currently see in much of the USA is a culture driven by commerce and short-term goals and resulting in considerable chaos and disorder. Leopold’s and Berry’s observations apply to urban neighborhoods and suburban shopping malls from Las Vegas to Xi’An. More recently, the American poet Wendell Berry tweeted on June 24, 2018, “A good farm is recognized as good partly by its beauty.” Footnote 1 By extension beyond the farm, every place reflects its culture. ![]() “The landscape of any farm is the owner’s portrait of himself,” he wrote ( 1939, p. Aldo Leopold is well known for his advocacy of a “land ethic” but less so for his ideas about a “land esthetic” ( 1949). ![]()
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